


Going-Away Present

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-23
Updated: 2006-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-13 16:37:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13574571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Cordelia's plans to leave Sunnydale get delayed for a little while.





	Going-Away Present

Gratitude, in Cordelia's opinion, really sucked. Especially when the person you had to feel grateful to was your ex-boyfriend, who didn't like you any more than you liked him, these days, but who still kept going around being _nice_ to you and making it hard for you to maintain a proper level of hatred. 

In other words, Xander Harris, for whom it obviously wasn't enough to buy her prom dress for her. No, he had to go and rescue her from the Sunnydale bus station, too. 

Who did he think he was, some kind of knight in shining armor? Now that she thought of it, that sounded like a good question, so she repeated it, this time out loud. 

Xander just shrugged. 

"Now that I think of it," she went on, "it's not very noble and chivalrous to take me back _here_ , anyway." She'd been in Xander's room a couple of times before, back during what she liked to call her Insane Dating-A-Loser Phase; it didn't look much different now. A little neater--like maybe he'd picked up some of the clothes off the floor--and the sheets had been stripped off the bed. Other than that, though, pretty much the same wreck of a bedroom. 

Her eyes narrowed a little, remembering why she'd been in Xander's room back in the bad old days. "Why _did_ you take me back here, anyway?" 

He shrugged again, and Cordelia felt the familiar urge to strangle him. "You said you didn't want me to take you home," he pointed out. 

That was true enough, if only because she didn't even have one, unless you counted her mom's crappy studio apartment above the hardware store where she'd found a job. She'd spent the past few nights sharing the pull-out couch with her mother, and she'd had enough of it.

Especially since she was supposed to be spending tonight in a motel in Los Angeles, getting ready to take Hollywood by storm. "You could have dropped me off at the bus station, like I told you to do."

"Yeah, well, next time I'll let you carry your own suitcases in. And then when the guy tells you your bus broke down in Oakland and the next one doesn't leave until tomorrow morning, you can sit in the bus station all night with the junkies and the perverts and the bloodsucking undead." 

And that brought her back to where she'd started: feeling grateful to Xander "King of the Losers" Harris. He _had_ given her a ride to the bus station when he'd seen her lugging her suitcases down the street. He _had_ carried her stuff inside for her. And when he'd heard Cordelia insisting that there had to be some kind of mistake, because she was supposed to be leaving _today_ , he'd offered to bring her back tomorrow. 

It wasn't his fault she didn't really have a home to go to any more, and he did. None of this was his fault. Xander just kept making it hard for her to hate him as much as she wanted to, and that made her _really_ mad at him. 

"Well, I'm not staying here all night. Your parents--" 

"--are in San Diego for my cousin's wedding," Xander said. "They won't be back until Monday." That was something, at least, because there was no way in hell she was going to be around Xander's dad again. Once had been plenty. 

On the other hand, Xander was still missing the whole point, as usual. "You do get that I'm not falling for this 'Gee, Cordy, I'm just trying to save you from the skuzzy bus station' act, right? I mean, I'm grateful, but I'm not going to be all _that_ grateful." 

She was about to move to Hollywood. She was an _actress_. She was sophisticated. She was not falling for Xander Harris's patented kicked-puppy expression. 

"We do have a spare bedroom," he said, and now she really wanted to kill him, because Cordelia Chase did not feel guilty for jumping to conclusions, ever. "And besides," he went on, "like I'd want Wesley's leftovers, anyway."

Thank God for Xander Harris and his inability to keep from being a jerk for more than an hour at a stretch. Grateful? She wasn't grateful. If anything, _Xander_ ought to be grateful she hadn't smacked him for that. 

Or smacked him for the reminder that he might have lacked class, sophistication, maturity, and a sexy accent, but Xander could have taught Wesley a thing or two about kissing. "Like I'd even consider a little boy after getting to know an actual _man_ ," she said. 

Xander scowled, but didn't say anything, which disappointed Cordelia. At least arguing with him kept her from thinking about how annoying it was that he could be so damned...nice. When he wasn't embarrassing her, or arguing with her, or breaking her-- her perfect string of being the dump-er, and not the dump-ee. He hadn't broken her heart. She hadn't liked him _that_ much. 

She finally sat down on the edge of his mattress. She had a copy of _How to Audition_ in one of her suitcases; she could always go down to Xander's car, get it out, and spend the time getting ready for her big break. 

Yeah, right, and listen to Xander tell her that what she needed to rehearse was, "Do you want fries with that?" He'd never be able to stand the thought that she was going to be rich, successful, and famous, while the closest he'd ever get to the jet-set was delivering their pizza or parking their cars. 

At least he'd accepted his fate. He hadn't even tried to have a future; the most he'd planned was that stupid cross-country trip he'd kept talking about. Which reminded her, why was he even around to annoy her? "Aren't you supposed to be living the life of the open road right about now? Don't let me keep you."

"I was on my way out of town," he said, "when I saw you schlepping those suitcases to the Greyhound station." He grinned at her. At least it wasn't the kicked-puppy look, although back when she was younger and dumber, that grin had made her knees go weak a couple of times. 

"Watch it, mister," she said, grinning back in spite of herself. "I do not schlep." Then it sank in: Xander had put off his stupid trip, the one he'd been planning for months, so that she didn't have to be stuck in a bus station. Only for a day, but still, he'd done it. 

Damn him, why couldn't he have just kept being a jerk? 

Okay, fine. She was stuck here, because she couldn't stand another day at her mom's place, and she didn't want to face any of her so-called friends and have them figure that out. But at ten-twenty-three tomorrow morning, her bus was pulling out of Sunnydale, and she was never coming back to this town. Between Buffy and Willow and the Hellmouth and his general un-ambitiousness, Xander was probably never going to _leave_ it, so the only place he'd ever see her again was at the movies or on TV. She could be pleasant. 

She was an actress, after all; all she had to do was act like someone who'd forgiven Xander for last fall. And at the same time, she reminded herself, she might want to try acting like someone who wasn't a sucker for Xander Harris and his goofy grin. 

She looked around the room, trying to find something they could talk about other than how she ought to appreciate what he'd done for her, or why he was being nice to her even though she hated his guts. Clothes on the floor, a small TV set--unplugged already, reminding her that he'd planned to be gone for a while--a box of what Cordelia already knew were comic books even without looking.... 

A bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill on the dresser with a sloppy maroon bow around it, not even halfway hidden from parental eyes. Which sort of said it all about Xander's parents, really, even if she hadn't met them herself. 

Xander must have seen what she was looking at, because he shrugged. "Graduation present from my uncle Rory," he said. "I think they were all out of pen-and-pencil sets at the 7-11." 

Okay, getting--not drunk, not unless she gulped down her half the bottle in a few minutes, but slightly buzzed--would at least kill some time, and maybe make hanging out with Xander a little more like a good time. "We could open it," she suggested. 

"Well, I was going to leave it for my parents, but... yeah. Okay. They can buy their own." He stood up, stretching. "I'll go down and get a couple of glasses."

"Pfft. There was a giant snake at our graduation ceremony. Your germs can't scare me," she said. 

" _You're_ suggesting we drink cheap wine straight from a bottle," Xander said, shaking his head. 

"Yeah. I can use this as the 'wacky bohemian youth' chapter of my autobiography," she said. "Open the damn bottle, Xander; I'm thirsty."

 

***

An hour later, the bottle was three-quarters empty, and Cordelia was regaling Xander with the story of Mrs. Adler and how many size-six dresses she'd split the seams on before they'd just started handing her size fourteens and _telling_ her they were sixes. "At least she's better than her daughter," she said. " _She_ buys five-hundred-dollar dresses and returns them after she wears them. And then tries to convince us that we sold her a dress with red wine stains on it." 

"Too bad I didn't know you could do that before the prom," he said.

"No way. That dress is coming with me to L.A. It'll do until I can afford something with a designer label." She passed him the wine bottle and lay back, arms folded behind her head, looking up at the ceiling. It had that weird bumpy finish that Cordelia had never understood people wanting in their house. Somehow, that didn't surprise her. 

Xander took another swig from the bottle. "Why does this stuff taste like Kool-Aid?" 

"Because it's candy-ass cheap wine? And if you don't like it, hand it over."

He took another drink and then nudged her leg with the bottle. 

"Bring it over here. I just got comfortable," she said, propping herself up on one elbow. When Xander didn't move, she clicked her fingers impatiently, and he rolled his eyes. 

"What did your last slave die of?" he muttered, but he got up and came to sit on the edge of the bed anyway. He was looking at her with a weird expression, and she wondered if he was thinking about last fall, when they'd been up here one afternoon after school, and she'd _almost_ decided it was time for them to go all the way. She probably would have, if Xander's mother hadn't come home from work, so thank God for small favors. 

She wouldn't have thought about that if Xander hadn't given her that same weird look back then, so it was all his fault, just like always.

Cordelia sat up the rest of the way, plucked the bottle out of his hands, and took a long drink. He was right; it did taste a little like strawberry Kool-Aid. There wasn't even much of a kick to it; it was just sweet, with a strong fake-fruit flavor. Nothing like the vodka that Aura had swiped from her parents' liquor cabinet at the last party Cordelia had been to. Vodka and orange juice was an actual _grown-up_ drink, not like this stuff. When she was rich and famous, she'd never let stuff like this near her again. 

On the other hand, it didn't burn her throat, and she had to admit, she kind of liked it. And she wasn't rich and famous _yet_. 

She handed the bottle back to Xander; he took it from her, but didn't drink right away. He just held onto it, obviously not caring that he was being out-drunk by a girl. That was one of the decent things about Xander; he didn't usually have to try to prove that he was better than she was. 

Not that he could, she thought, but that was beside the point. Most people couldn't, but they tried anyway. 

"Hey," she said, "either drink it or hand it back." When Xander didn't move, she leaned over to take it from him. 

Her first sign that the wine might have had more effect than she'd been thinking was that she misjudged the distance and wound up practically lying across Xander's lap. "Oops," she said, giggling a little and reaching out for it again. 

He held it out of her reach. "Think maybe we've had enough for right now," he suggested. 

Oh, no. Cordelia definitely didn't want to sober up, not right now. If she was sober, she was going to be able to think _clearly_ about things, and she might even decide that while Xander deserved to suffer for what he'd done last fall, overall, he was a pretty good guy. 

She didn't want to decide that. She wanted to leave Sunnydale and Xander behind with absolutely no regrets whatsoever. "Give me that," she said, and when Xander didn't, she decided to start fighting dirty. 

"Hey!" Xander said when she tickled his side, right above the waistband of his jeans, using the superior knowledge of the ex-girlfriend. "No fair," he added, twisting away to set the bottle down on the nightstand. She reached for it again, this time unintentionally pushing Xander down on the bed. 

He didn't really try to stop her, either, which Cordelia regretted about five seconds later when she realized she was sprawling on top of him. "Don't start getting any ideas," she warned him.

"You know me," he said, his voice sounding a little strained. "One hundred percent idea-free." 

"I know you," she repeated. "Mister Linoleum-Gets-Me-Hot." Okay, she was dressed for a day spent on a bus, not for a date, but still, compared to linoleum, she was uber-hot. 

And she still had eighteen hours before her bus left, and she was starting to think, from the way she _wasn't_ hurrying to move, that maybe she was the one getting ideas. 

Maybe that was okay. After all, didn't she just say she wanted to leave with no regrets? Maybe this was an important step: Putting the Ex-Boyfriend Behind Her. 

And when she won her Oscar--or Emmy; she wasn't too proud for TV work--Xander would watch her on TV and know that no one would ever, _ever_ believe that he even knew her, let alone... was she actually thinking about having sex with him? 

Yeah. She was. She could blame it on graduation and cheap wine and a broken-down bus, and tomorrow she'd forget all about it, and Xander. Besides, the guy was going to end up marrying some waitress named Staci or supermarket cashier named Tammi; at least this way he'd have _something_ to look back on.

"Well, maybe one or two ideas would be okay," she said, leaning down and kissing him. 

It took him a couple of seconds to mentally catch up with her, and then he reached up, cupping her face in his hands, and started kissing her back. 

Oh, yeah, Xander could kiss. At least, he could now; she'd taught him well. Although the part where he let one hand trail down her neck and along her shoulder, then further down--that was him improvising. He stopped, though, with his hand hovering on her side, rather than sliding it around to her breast, and Cordelia gave him an impatient glare. "Since when do you wait for permission before you start with the groping?"

"Since you hate me?" 

He might have a point there. On the other hand, she didn't _hate_ him, not any more. Maybe for a while, but not these days; he wasn't important enough to hate. "If I hated you, there's no way you'd be getting this close without being smacked to the floor," she pointed out. "And you still might, if you don't get on with it." 

That was apparently enough encouragement for Xander; his hand slipped over to her breast, thumb rubbing over the nipple, and Cordelia leaned down to kiss him again so that she didn't actually moan out loud. No point in giving him _too_ much of an ego-boost, after all, although when he remembered that he had a second hand and she had a second breast, she did gasp. 

She scooted down a little, wriggling and giving Xander a very satisfied grin when he groaned, his hips arching against her. Between her temporary case of unpopularity after The Xander Incident, and the time she'd wasted flirting with Wesley, it had been a long time since Cordelia had even really made out with somebody; that felt way too good.

Xander looked up at her, eyes already a little unfocused and hazy, and said, "Are we going to--I mean, are you sure you want to--"

She gave him another look. "Consider it my going-away present. It doesn't mean I like you."

"That's nothing new," Xander said under his breath, and Cordelia felt that tiny bit of guilt again. She decided to ignore it and move ahead, sliding her hands under his shirt while she shifted to press herself down more firmly against his erection. 

She kissed him again, hard, giving up all claim to remaining cool and collected when he unbuttoned her shirt, leaving it hanging open. He let one finger trace along the cleft between her breasts, before taking hold of the front of her bra and undoing the clasp. 

"What are you grinning about?" she asked, and the grin just got bigger. 

"That. It's a, um. A good look for you," he said, and she grinned back. 

"Dork," she said, pleased. Even considering the source, that was too goofy to be anything but a real compliment. 

She rocked against him slowly, grinning even more when one of his hands fell to his side, clutching uselessly at the bare mattress. This wasn't like the last time--the only time--she'd had sex, fumbling and awkward in the back of a car with a college guy whose last name she'd forgotten by now. Not that this was moonlight and roses; it wasn't like she expected Xander Harris to have suddenly turned into a sex god. 

But she was having fun--not just a minute or two of "oh God, that feels good," fun, but _fun_ , and she was going to pretend that it didn't remind her of how much she'd liked Xander, back before he'd proved that he was just another creep after all. 

"Do you have, uh, anything?" she asked him, mentally kicking herself. It wasn't like she hadn't said the word "condom" before in her life. It also wasn't like she was going to even consider having sex with him without one. Pregnant eighteen-year-olds rarely got on the cover of _People_ magazine. 

"Yeah. Um. In my wallet," he said, and then added, "I'm going to have to stand up to get it."

She rolled off of him, lying on her back on the bed again, while Xander got up and pulled his wallet out of his pocket. "You carry a condom with you," she said. "'Cause, what? Some girl's going to jump you in a dark alley and _not_ just want to bite your neck?" 

"It's a guy thing," he muttered, opening his wallet. Cordelia rolled her eyes--how many stupid things got explained by being "a guy thing"?--but at least he was right; he did have a condom. 

If this had happened the way she'd imagined it a year ago, there'd have been candles, music... sheets. They'd at least have taken all their clothes off. 

Instead, she kicked off her left shoe--her right had already come off at some point--and shimmied out of her pants and underwear. She was going to take her shirt the rest of the way off, but she made the mistake of looking up at Xander, who'd gotten out of his jeans and boxers with a speed he usually reserved for running away from demons. 

It wasn't that Xander was bad-looking. Really, she'd known since his stint on the swim team that he looked better without his clothes, or without many of his clothes, than he did with them on, though that was partly because his clothes set new standards for ugly. 

On the other hand, Cordelia's limited experience had pretty much taught her that there was a reason most people had sex in the dark, and it was to stop women from laughing at what guys looked like naked. She didn't laugh, but she did have to bite her lip to stop herself. 

And Xander noticed. "You're still okay with this, right?" he said. 

She looked down at the mattress, counting thin blue and white stripes in her head to keep herself from giggling while she answered. "Except for the part where you're wasting time," she said, and a minute later heard the sound of the condom packet being torn open. 

It occurred to her then that having sex with her ex-boyfriend might be an amazingly dumb idea, but then Xander was back on the bed, kissing her and grinning with that stupid grin that she liked entirely too much, and after all, she could leave all of this behind her tomorrow. She'd never have to talk to Xander again as long as she lived, and nobody in Los Angeles would ever know about it. She'd be dating rich, gorgeous, talented guys, and even if someone _told_ them about this, they'd never believe it. 

She'd be the only person in Hollywood to know that she'd done this, that she let Xander push her thighs apart, closing his eyes for a moment and taking several deep, shaky breaths before pushing into her. 

Cordelia's own breath caught in her throat for a second, until she got used to the feeling of Xander inside her and began to move her hips, lifting them up to meet him. 

The earth was definitely not moving. She hadn't really expected it to; that was just going to have to wait until she got the attention of some real _man_ , not a boy just out of high school. But that was okay; this was good, and it was Xander, which meant that when he accidentally put his hand down on the ends of her hair, so that when she turned her head, it pulled, or when she moved her leg the wrong way and kicked him in the ankle, they could yelp and grin and then forget all about it. It was nice. 

Nice enough that when Xander--and imagine her complete lack of surprise at this--finished _way_ before her, she decided against making a sarcastic comment about it, just waited until he'd gotten rid of the condom before clearing her throat and saying, "Aren't you forgetting something?" 

She was pretty sure Brad Pitt wouldn't have turned red, but then again, she was pretty sure Brad wouldn't have needed that kind of reminder, either. Still, Xander stretched out next to her again, kissing her while he slipped a hand between her legs, and no matter what her opinion was of Xander's general competence, months of making out in her car had taught him how to do _this_. 

She wasn't going to let herself think about whether or not he'd had any practice with anyone else--Willow or his used-to-be-a-demon prom date; she just closed her eyes, letting herself concentrate on the way Xander's knuckles brushed over her clit, on the feel of his fingers sliding inside her. 

It didn't take long that before she was shuddering, clenching around Xander's fingers and kissing him to keep herself from being loud enough that the neighbors could hear her. Even once she'd stilled, settling back down on the bed and waiting for her breathing to slow, Xander didn't move his hand away, not until she turned partway over onto her side. 

He smiled at her, holding his hand up and flexing his fingers to stretch them. She smiled back for a second before remembering herself and warning him, "Don't think this means I've forgiven you."

His grin faded, and he shrugged. "Don't worry; I won't."

Maybe she'd been a _little_ harsh. "On the other hand, I might not totally hate you," she added.

She sat up, reaching over him for the bottle of Boone's and taking another drink. It was too sweet and tasted a little bit like strawberry lip gloss; if there was ever a drink without any sophistication at all, this was it. But sometimes, maybe unsophisticated wasn't the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
